Gunship Ace: The Wars of Neall Ellis, Gunship Pilot and Mercenary
Authored by: Al J. Venter
Book Review by: Anonymous
Gunship Ace is the biography of White South African Mercenary Helicopter pilot Neall Ellis who upon retiring at the rank of Colonel after having served in the South African Air Force up to the early 1990's as a helicopter pilot took his skills international as a mercenary pilot throughout Africa, Yugoslavia, the Middle East, Asia, and Afghanistan.
The majority of the book deals with his upbringing in Rhodesia, his schooling, his short-lived conscription into the Rhodesian army, his moving to South Africa to pursue the South African Air Force, and then his pilot training followed by service in various bush and border wars. His introduction to mercenary flying within other African theaters is also quite descriptive with him having no choice after being forced into retirement with the ending of South African White rule and the dumb monkeys taking over. The descriptions of Ellis's childhood and his family history places the reader quite well in his place and why he chose the life path he did. Although the author does go into some detail about the historical backstory of events throughout the book he doesn't allow it to take over the narration and instead focuses completely on Neall Ellis and his descriptions.
The meat and bones of Ellis's memory highlights his service in the South African Air Force and the War he fought in Sierra Leone first as part of a PMC and then later independently with a team in their own helicopters. Some of the battle and operation descriptions will keep the reader excited while in others much of the details are glossed over by the author or Neall Ellis himself for his own reasons. One of the criticisms of the book that I agree with is that some events such as his mercenary service in Afghanistan drop off too quickly and the chapters in question don't entail long drawn out service records like the other detailed wars but this can be explained in that as the book went to print in 2011 Neall Ellis was still contract flying in Afghanistan and hadn't been in the theater that long. I do agree that he didn't divulge enough detail about his short-lived service flying supplies for Bosnian rebels, his service as the pilot of the Tanzanian President's reelection campaign or fighting fighting forest fires in South East Asia.
The book is quite enjoyable and the character of the man that emerges is one that I think anyone can respect whether they are reading it as a civilian or soldier.
You can download the book here for free either on EPUB or PDF format. The download was safe for me and no viruses were detected.
https://oceanofpdf.com/genres/military-fiction/pdf-epub-gunship-ace-the-wars-of-neall-ellis-gunship-pilot-and-mercenary-download/